Byron by John Nichol

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Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon anintellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished tobe--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century.Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record variousimpressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded orpatronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey,in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; anAmerican writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion:to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him tohave been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first Englishpoet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France,Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud ofhis race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evilof his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, amatter of no idle antiquarianism.

There are legends of old Norse Buruns migrating from their home inScandinavia, and settling, one branch in Normandy, another in Livonia. Tothe latter belonged a distant Marshal de Burun, famous for the almostabsolute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two membersof the family came over with the Conqueror, and settled in England. OfErneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more.Ralph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book--our firstauthentic record--as having estates in Nottinghamshire and Derby. His sonHugh was lord of Horestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son ofthe same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossington tothe monks of Lenton. Tim latter Hugh joined their order; but the race wascontinued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery ofSwinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry II. (1155-1189), whenRobert de Byron adopted the spelling of his name afterwards retained, andby his marriage with Cecilia, heir of Sir Richard Clayton, added to thefamily possessions an estate; in Lancashire, where, till the time of HenryVIII., they fixed their seat. The poet, relying on old wood-carvings atNewstead, claims for some of his ancestors a part in the crusades, andmentions a name not apparently belonging to that age--

Near Ascalon's towers, John of Horestan slumbers--

a romance, like many of his, possibly founded on fact, but incapable ofverification.

Two grandsons of Sir Robert have a more substantial fame, having servedwith distinction in the wars of Edward I. The elder of these was governorof the city of York. Some members of his family fought at Cressy, and oneof his sons, Sir John, was knighted by Edward III. at the siege of Calais.Descending through the other, Sir Richard, we come to another Sir John,knighted by Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., on his landing at Milford. Hefought, with his kin, on the field of Bosworth, and dying without issue,left the estates to his brother, Sir Nicholas, knighted in 1502, at themarriage of Prince Arthur. The son of Sir Nicholas, known as "little SirJohn of the great beard," appears to have been a favourite of Henry VIII.,who made him Steward of Manchester and Lieutenant of Sherwood, and on thedissolution of the monasteries presented him with the Priory of Newstead,the rents of which were equivalent to about 4000l. of our money. Sir John,who stepped into the Abbey in 1540, married twice, and the prematureappearance of a son by the second wife--widow of Sir George Halgh--broughtthe bar sinister of which so much has been made. No indication of thisfact, however, appears in the family arms, and it is doubtful if the poetwas aware of a reproach which in any case does not touch his descent. The"filius naturalis," John Byron of Clayton, inherited by deed of gift, andwas knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1579. His descendants were prominent asstaunch Royalists during the whole period of the Civil Wars. At Edgehillthere were seven Byrons on the field.

On Marston, with Rupert 'gainst traitors contending, Four brothers enrich'd with their blood the bleak field.

Sir Nicholas, one of the seven, is extolled as "a person of greataffability and dexterity, as well as martial knowledge, which gave greatlife to the designs of the well affected." He was taken prisoner by theParliament while acting as governor of Chester. Under his nephew, SirJohn, Newstead is said to have been besieged and taken; but the knightescaped, in the words of the poet--never a Radical at heart--a "protectinggenius,

For nobler combats here reserved his life, To lead the band where godlike Falkland foil."

Clarendon, indeed, informs us, that on the morning before the battle,Falkland, "very cheerful, as always upon action, put himself into thefirst rank of the Lord Byron's regiment." This slightly antedates histitle. The first battle of Newbury was fought on September, 1643. For hisservices there, and at a previous royal victory, over Waller in July, SirJohn was, on October 24th of the same year, created Baron of Rochdale, andso became the first Peer of the family.

This first lord was succeeded by his brother Richard (1605-1079), famousin the war for his government and gallant defence of Newark. He rests inthe vault that now contains the dust of the greatest of his race, HucknallTorkard Church, where his epitaph records the fact that the family lostall their present fortunes by their loyalty, adding, "yet it pleased Godso to bless the humble endeavours of the said Richard, Lord Byron, that herepurchased part of their ancient inheritance, which he left to hisposterity, with a laudable memory for his great piety and charity." Hiseldest son, William, the third Lord (died 1695), is worth remembering ontwo accounts. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Chaworth, andso wove the first link in a strange association of tragedy and romance: hewas a patron of one of those poets who, approved by neither gods norcolumns, are remembered by the accident of an accident, and was himself apoetaster, capable of the couplet,--

My whole ambition only does extend To gain the name of Shipman's faithful friend,--

an ambition which, considering its moderate scope, may be granted to haveattained its desire.

His successor, the fourth lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber toPrince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by histhird wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of astrange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. Theeldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage ofthe poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the"Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, andsubsequently became master of the stag-hounds. In 1765, the year of thepassing of the American Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured thewhole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners ofthe time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of anaristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron andMr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the courseof the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose betweenthem about the management of game, so frivolous that one conjectures thequarrel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of offence. Betswere offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matterhad blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs,and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to showthem an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow candle being placedon the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, andthe hotel master rushing in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded.There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, having received thefirst lunge harmlessly in his waistcoat, had shortened his sword and runhis adversary through the body, with the boast, not uncharacteristic ofhis grand nephew, "By G-d, I have as much courage as any man in England."A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on acharge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took placein Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold forsix guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned averdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying hisfees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-hauntedman, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like abaited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of thewildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into thecarriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried todrown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weirdlegends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor'sonly companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receivestripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodusin procession from the house. When at home he spent his time inpistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeriesof the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated hisheir presumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale,--a proceeding afterwardschallenged--and cut down the trees of Newstead, to spite him; but hesurvived his three sons, his brother, and his only grandson, who waskilled in Corsica in 1794.

On his own death in 1798, the estates and title passed to George Gordon,then a child of ten, whom he used to talk of, without a shadow ofinterest, as "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen." His sister Isabellamarried Lord Carlisle, and became the mother of the fifth Earl, the poet'snominal guardian. She was a lady distinguished for eccentricity ofmanners, and (like her son satirized in the _Bards and Reviewers_) for theperpetration of indifferent verses. The career of the fourth lord's secondson, John, the poet's grandfather, recalls that of the sea-kings from whomthe family claim to have sprung. Born in 1723, he at an early age enteredthe naval service, and till his death in 1786 was tossed from storm tostorm. "He had no rest on sea, nor I on shore," writes his illustriousdescendant. In 1740 a fleet of five ships was sent out under CommodoreAnson to annoy the Spaniards, with whom we were then at war, in the SouthSeas. Byron took service as a midshipman in one of those ships--all moreor less unfortunate--called "The Wager." Being a bad sailor, and heavilyladen, she was blown from her company, and wrecked in the Straits ofMagellan. The majority of the crew were cast on a bleak rock, which theychristened Mount Misery. After encountering all the horrors of mutiny andfamine, and being in various ways deserted, five of the survivors, amongthem Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to theIsland of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They werekept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. Iago, the capital of Chili,and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brestin October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at Dover in a Dutch vessel.

This voyage is the subject of a well-known apostrophe in _The Pleasures ofHope_, beginning--

And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his native shore. In torrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, 'Twas his to mourn misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled by the rock.

Byron's own account of his adventures, published in 1768, is remarkablefor freshness of scenery like that of our first literary traveller, SirJohn Mandeville, and a force of description which recalls Defoe. Itinterests us more especially from the use that has been made of it in thatmarvellous mosaic of voyages, the shipwreck, in _Don Juan_, the hardshipsof his hero being, according to the poet--

Comparative To those related in my grand-dad's narrative.

In June, 1764, Byron sailed with two ships, the "Dolphin" and the "Tamar,"on a voyage of discovery arranged by Lord Egmont, to seek a southerncontinent, in the course of which he took possession of the largest of theFalkland Islands, again passed through the Magellanic Straits, and sailinghome by the Pacific, circumnavigated the globe. The planets so conspiredthat, though his affable manners and considerate treatment made him alwayspopular with his men, sailors became afraid to serve under "foul-weatherJack." In 1748 he married the daughter of a Cornish squire, JohnTrevanion. They had two sons and three daughters. One of the lattermarried her cousin (the fifth lord's eldest son), who died in 1776,leaving as his sole heir the youth who fell in the Mediterranean in 1794.

The eldest son of the veteran, John Byron, father of the poet, was born in1751, educated at Westminster, and, having received a commission, became acaptain in the guards; but his character, fundamentally unprincipled, soondeveloped itself in such a manner as to alienate him from his family. In1778, under circumstances of peculiar effrontery, he seduced AmeliaD'Arcy, the daughter of the Earl of Holdernesse, in her own right CountessConyers, then wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds."Mad Jack," as he was called, seems to have boasted of his conquest; butthe marquis, to whom his wife had hitherto been devoted, refused tobelieve the rumours that were afloat, till an intercepted letter,containing a remittance of money, for which Byron, in reverse of the usualrelations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pairdecamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained adivorce, they were regularly married. Byron seems to have been not onlyprofligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he waseven more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, havinggiven birth to two daughters. One died in infancy; the other was Augusta,the half sister and good genius of the poet, whose memory remains like astar on the fringe of a thunder-cloud, only brighter by the passing of thesmoke of calumny. In 1807 she married Colonel Leigh, and had a numerousfamily, most of whom died young. Her eldest daughter, Georgiana, marriedMr. Henry Trevanion. The fourth, Medora, had an unfortunate history, thenucleus of an impertinent and happily ephemeral romance.

The year after the death of his first wife, John Byron, who seems to havehad the fascinations of a Barry Lyndon, succeeded in entrapping a second.This was Miss Catherine Gordon of Gight, a lady with considerable estatesin Aberdeenshire--which attracted the adventurer--and an overweeningHighland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts,through his daughter Annabella, and the second Earl of Huntly. This unionsuggested the ballad of an old rhymer, beginning--

The prophecy was soon fulfilled. The property of the Scotch heiress wassquandered with impetuous rapidity by the English rake. In 1780 she leftScotland for France, and returned to England toward the close of thefollowing year. On the 22nd of January, 1788, in Holles Street, London,Mrs. Byron gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, sixth Lord.Shortly after, being pressed by his creditors, the father abandoned both,and leaving them with a pittance of 150 _l_ a year, fled to Valenciennes,where he died, in August, 1791.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL LIFE.

Soon after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron took him to Scotland. Afterspending some time with a relation, she, early in 1790, settled in a smallhouse at Aberdeen. Ere long her husband, who had in the intervaldissipated away his remaining means, rejoined her; and they lived togetherin humble lodgings, until their tempers, alike fiery and irritable,compelled a definite separation. They occupied apartments, for some time,at the opposite ends of the same street, and interchanged visits. Beingaccustomed to meet the boy and his nurse, the father expressed a wish thatthe former should be sent to live with him, at least for some days. "Tothis request," Moore informs us, "Mrs. Byron was at first not very willingto accede; but, on the representation of the nurse that if he kept himover one night he would not do so another, she consented. On inquiringnext morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he hadhad quite enough of his young visitor." After a short stay in the north,the Captain, extorting enough money from his wife to enable him to flyfrom his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been arelief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, thather shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls ananecdote of a similar outburst--attested by Sir W. Scott, who was presenton the occasion--before her marriage. Being present at a representation,in Edinburgh, of the _Fatal Marriage_, when Mrs. Siddons was personatingIsabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of thetheatre, screaming out "O my Biron, my Biron." All we know of hercharacter shows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward,but hysterical. She constantly boasted of her descent, and clung to thecourtesy title of "honourable," to which she had no claim. Her affectionand anger were alike demonstrative, her temper never for an hour secure.She half worshipped, half hated, the blackguard to whom she was married,and took no steps to protect her property; her son she alternately pettedand abused. "Your mother's a fool!" said a school companion to him yearsafter. "I know it," was his unique and tragic reply. Never was poet bornto so much illustrious, and to so much bad blood. The records of hisinfancy betray the temper which he preserved through life--passionate,sullen, defiant of authority, but singularly amenable to kindness. Onbeing scolded by his first nurse for having soiled a dress, withoututtering a word he tore it from top to seam, as he had seen his mothertear her caps and gowns; but her sister and successor in office, May Gray,acquired and retained a hold over his affections, to which he has bornegrateful testimony. To her training is attributed the early and remarkableknowledge of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms, which he possessed:he was, according to her later testimony, peculiarly inquisitive andpuzzling about religion. Of the sense of solitude, induced by his earliestimpressions, he characteristically makes a boast. "My daughter, my wife,my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural daughter, andmyself, are or were all only children. But the fiercest animals have thefewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, &c."

To this practical orphanhood, and inheritance of feverish passion, therewas added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physicaldefect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned toa high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter Scottwas lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over thatserene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest prose andverse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope, we mustremember that he was a cripple: and Byron never allows us to forget,because he himself never forgot it. Accounts differ as to the extent andorigin of his deformity; and the doubts on the matter are not removed bythe inconsistent accounts of the indelicate post-mortem examination madeby Mr. Trelawny at Mesolonghi. It is certain that one of the poet's feetwas, either at birth or at a very early period, so seriously clubbed ortwisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable extent his habits. Italso appears that the surgical means--boots, bandages, &c.--adopted tostraighten the limb, only aggravated the evil. His sensitiveness on thesubject was early awakened by careless or unfeeling references. "What apretty boy Byron is," said a friend of his nurse. "What a pity he has sucha leg." On which the child, with flashing eyes, cutting at her with ababy's whip, cried out, "Dinna speak of it." His mother herself, in herviolent fits, when the boy ran round the room laughing at her attempts tocatch him, used to say he was a little dog, as bad as his father, and tocall him "a lame brat"--an incident, which, notoriously suggested theopening scene of the _Deformed Transformed_. In the height of hispopularity he fancied that the beggars and street-sweepers in London weremocking him. He satirized and discouraged dancing; he preferred riding andswimming to other exercises, because they concealed his weakness; and onhis death-bed asked to be blistered in such a way that he might not becalled on to expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, andothers, assure us that in society few would have observed the defect if hehad not referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and thereforenever far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men.

In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys, taughtby a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeatmonosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a devout andclever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to his own account hemade astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Romanhistory, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Longafterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum and looking down onthe little round lake, he remembered his young enthusiasm and his oldinstructor. He next came under the charge of a tutor called Paterson, whomhe describes as "a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man. He was theson of my shoemaker, but a good scholar. With him I began Latin, andcontinued till I went to the grammar school, where I threaded all theclasses to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of myuncle."

Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn fromscattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low inhis class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand high; butthat he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuriating in the_Arabian Nights_. He was an indifferent penman, and always dislikedmathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eagerfor adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than totake one, affectionate, though resentful.

When his cousin was killed at Corsica, in 1794, he became the next heir tothe title. In 1797, a friend, meaning to compliment the boy, said, "Weshall have the pleasure some day of reading your speeches in the House ofCommons," he, with precocious consciousness, replied, "I hope not. If youread any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords." Similarly,when, in the course of the following year, the fierce old man at Newsteaddied, and the young lord's name was called at school with "Dominus"prefixed to it, his emotion was so great that he was unable to answer, andburst into tears.

Belonging to this period is the somewhat shadowy record of a childishpassion for a distant cousin slightly his senior, Mary Duff, with whom heclaims to have fallen in love in his ninth year. We have a quaint pictureof the pair sitting on the grass together, the girl's younger sisterbeside them playing with a doll. A German critic gravely remarks, "Thisstrange phenomenon places him beside Dante." Byron himself, dilating onthe strength of his attachment, tells us that he used to coax a maid towrite letters for him, and that when he was sixteen, on being informed, byhis mother, of Mary's marriage, he nearly fell into convulsions. But inthe history of the calf-loves of poets it is difficult to distinguishbetween the imaginative afterthought and the reality. This equally appliesto other recollections of later years. Moore remarks--"that the charm ofscenery, which derives its chief power from fancy and association, shouldbe felt at an age when fancy is yet hardly awake and associations are butfew, can with difficulty he conceived." But between the ages of eight andten, an appreciation of external beauty is sufficiently common. No onedoubts the accuracy of Wordsworth's account, in the _Prelude_ of his earlyhalf-sensuous delight in mountain glory. It is impossible to define theinfluence of Nature, either on nations or individuals, or to saybeforehand what selection from his varied surroundings a poet will forartistic purposes elect to make. Shakespeare rests in meadows and glades,and leaves to Milton "Teneriffe and Atlas." Burns, who lived for aconsiderable part of his life in daily view of the hills of Arran, neveralludes to them. But, in this respect like Shelley, Byron was inspired bya passion for the high-places of the earth. Their shadow is on half hisverse. "The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow" perpetuallyremind him of one of his constantly recurring refrains,--

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below.

In the course of 1790, after an attack of scarlet fever at Aberdeen he wastaken by his mother to Ballater, and on his recovery spent much of histime in rambling about the country. "From this period," he says, "I datemy love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, yearsafterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even inminiature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned toCheltenham I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with asensation which I cannot describe." Elsewhere, in _The Island_ he returns,amid allusions to the Alps and Apennines, to the friends of his youth:--

The infant rapture still survived the boy, And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy, Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.

The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and weare informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled theeasily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has madesuch effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none theless genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in _Don Juan_, toJeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of hisearly training:--

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred A whole one; and my heart flies to my head As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all-- Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall-- All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, Like Banquo's offspring...

Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent. His satire onher reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personalantipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young ladyremarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burstout "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d----d country wassunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which wehave quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,--

I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit, Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly. Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit; They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. I scotch'd, not kill'd, the Scotchman in my blood, And love the land of mountain and of flood.

This suggests a few words on a question of more than local interest.Byron's most careful biographer has said of him: "Although on his firstexpedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yetthe whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anythingbut Scottish. Scottish nationality is tainted with narrow and provincialelements. Byron's poetic character, on the other hand, is universal andcosmopolitan. He had no attachment to localities, and never devotedhimself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends."Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, "he was the mostun-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution." Rough national verdictsare apt to be superficial. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne,has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conqueringenergy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, butfrom ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In likemanner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make criticsforget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, fromthe Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same timehas been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. Oflate years, the struggle for existence, the temptations of a too ambitiousand over active people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing effect ofthe constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, havefor the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence. Thesequalities have been adequately combined in Scott alone, the one massiveand complete literary type of his race. Burns, to his ruin, had only thefire: the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects lessgenuine, was indefinitely and inevitably wider. His intensely susceptiblenature took a dye from every scene, city, and society through which hepassed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of a descendant of theSea-Kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains he had first learned tolisten to the sound of the "two mighty voices" that haunted and inspiredhim through life.

In the autumn of 1798 the family, i.e. his mother--who had sold the wholeof her household furniture for 75 _l_--with himself, and a maid, setsouth. The poet's only recorded impression of the journey is a gleam ofLoch Leven, to which he refers in one of his latest letters. He neverrevisited the land of his childhood. Our next glimpse of him is on hispassing the toll-bar of Newstead. Mrs. Byron asked the old woman who keptit, "Who is the next heir?" and on her answer "They say it is a little boywho lives at Aberdeen," "This is he, bless him!" exclaimed the nurse.

Returned to the ancestral Abbey, and finding it half ruined and desolate,they migrated for a time to the neighbouring Nottingham. Here the child'sfirst experience was another course of surgical torture. He was placedunder the charge of a quack named Lavender, who rubbed his foot in oil,and screwed it about in wooden machines. This useless treatment isassociated with two characteristic anecdotes. One relates to the endurancewhich Byron, on every occasion of mere physical trial, was capable ofdisplaying. Mr. Rogers, a private tutor, with whom he was reading passagesof Virgil and Cicero, remarked, "It makes me uncomfortable, my lord, tosee you sitting them in such pain as I know you must be suffering." "Nevermind, Mr. Rogers." said the child, "you shall not see any signs of it inme." The other illustrates his precocious delight in detecting imposture.Having scribbled on a piece of paper several lines of mere gibberish, hebrought them to Lavender, and gravely asked what language it was; and onreceiving the answer "It is Italian," he broke into an exultant laugh atthe expense of his tormentor. Another story survives, of his vindictivespirit giving birth to his first rhymes. A meddling old lady, who used tovisit his mother and was possessed of a curious belief in a futuretransmigration to our satellite--the bleakness of whose scenery she hadnot realized--having given him some cause of offence, he stormed out tohis nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented hiswrath in the quatrain.--

In Nottingham county there lives, at Swan Green, As curst an old lady as ever was seen; And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, She firmly believes she will go to the moon.

The poet himself dates his "first dash into poetry" a year later (1800),from his juvenile passion for his cousin Margaret Parker, whose subsequentdeath from an injury caused by a fall he afterwards deplored in aforgotten elegy. "I do not recollect," he writes through the transfiguringmists of memory, "anything equal to the _transparent_ beauty of my cousin,or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of ourintimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbow--all beautyand peace. My passion had the usual effects upon me--I could not sleep; Icould not eat; I could not rest. It was the texture of my life to think ofthe time that must elapse before we could meet again. But I was a foolthen, and not much wiser now." _Sic transit secunda_.

The departure at a somewhat earlier date of May Gray for her nativecountry, gave rise to evidence of another kind of affection. On herleaving he presented her with his first watch, and a miniature by Kay ofEdinburgh, representing him with a bow and arrow in his hand and aprofusion of hair over his shoulders. He continued to correspond with herat intervals. Byron was always beloved by his servants. This nurseafterwards married well, and during her last illness, in 1827,communicated to her attendant, Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, recollections of thepoet, from which his biographers have drawn.

In the summer of 1799 he was sent to London, entrusted to the medical careof Dr. Baillie (brother of Joanna, the dramatist), and placed in aboarding school at Dulwich, under the charge of Dr. Glennie. The physicianadvised a moderation in athletic sports, which the patient in his hours ofliberty was constantly apt to exceed. The teacher--who continued tocherish an affectionate remembrance of his pupil, even when he was told,on a visit to Geneva in 1817, that, he ought to have "made a better boy ofhim"--testifies to the alacrity with which he entered on his tasks, hisplayful good-humour with his comrades, his reading in history beyond hisage, and his intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. "In my study," hestates, "he found many books open to him; among others, a set of our poetsfrom Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had morethan once perused from beginning to end." One of the books referred to wasthe _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the "Juno,"_ which contains, almostword for word, the account of the "two fathers," in _Don Juan_. MeanwhileMrs. Byron,--whose reduced income had been opportunely augmented by agrant of a 300_l_. annuity from the Civil List,--after revisiting Newsteadfollowed her son to London, and took up her residence in a house inSloane-terrace. She was in the habit of having him with her there fromSaturday to Monday, kept him from school for weeks, introduced him to idlecompany, and in other ways was continually hampering his progress.

Byron on his accession to the peerage having become a ward in Chancery,was handed over by the Court to the guardianship of Lord Carlisle, nephewof the admiral, and son of the grand aunt of the poet. Like his motherthis Earl aspired to be a poet, and his tragedy, _The Father's Revenge_,received some commendation from Dr. Johnson; but his relations with hisillustrious kinsman were from the first unsatisfactory. In answer to Dr.Glennie's appeal, he exerted his authority against the interruptions tohis ward's education; but the attempt to mend matters led to suchoutrageous exhibitions of temper that he said to the master, "I can havenothing more to do with Mrs. Byron; you must now manage her as you can."Finally, after two years of work, which she had done her best to mar, sheherself requested his guardian to have her son removed to a public school,and accordingly he went to Harrow, where he remained till the autumn of1805. The first vacation, in the summer of 1801, is marked by his visit toCheltenham, where his mother, from whom he inherited a fair amount ofScotch superstition, consulted a fortune-teller, who said he would betwice married, the second time to a foreigner.

Harrow was then under the management of Dr. Joseph Drury, one of the mostestimable of its distinguished head-masters. His account of the firstimpressions produced by his pupil, and his judicious manner of handling asensitive nature, cannot with advantage be condensed. "Mr. Hanson," hewrites, "Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age ofthirteen and a half, with remarks that his education had been neglected;that he was ill prepared for a public school; but that he thought therewas a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young discipleinto my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by inquiries as to hisformer amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or noeffect, and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted tomy management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it wasnecessary to attach him to an elder boy; but the information he receivedgave him no pleasure when he heard of the advances of some much youngerthan himself. This I discovered, and assured him that he should not beplaced till by diligence he might rank with those of his own age. Hismanner and temper soon convinced me that he might be led by a silkenstring to a point, rather than a cable: on that principle I acted."

After a time, Dr. Drury tells us that he waited on Lord Carlisle, whowished to give some information about his ward's property and to inquirerespecting his abilities, and continues: "On the former circumstance Imade no remark; as to the latter I replied, 'He has talents, my lord,which will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed!' said his lordship, with adegree of surprise that, according to my feeling, did not express in itall the satisfaction I expected." With, perhaps, unconscious humour on thepart of the writer, we are left in doubt as to whether the indifferenceproceeded from the jealousy that clings to poetasters, from incredulity,or a feeling that no talent could add lustre to rank.

In 1804 Byron refers to the antipathy his mother had to his guardian.Later he expresses gratitude for some unknown service, in recognition ofwhich the second edition of the _Hours of Idleness_ was dedicated "by hisobliged ward and affectionate kinsman," to Lord Carlisle. The tributebeing coldly received, led to fresh estrangement, and when Byron, on hiscoming of age, wrote to remind the Earl of the fact, in expectation ofbeing introduced to the House of Peers, he had for answer a mere formalstatement of its rules. This rebuff affected him as Addison's praise ofTickell affected Pope, and the following lines, were published in theMarch of the same year:--

Lords too are bards! such things at times befall, And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all. Yet did or taste or reason sway the times, Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes. Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled, No future laurels deck a noble head; No muse will cheer, with renovating smile The paralytic puling of Carlisle.

In prose he adds, "If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything infavour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutifuldedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and Iseize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As wasfrequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 heexpressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference tothe death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of _ChildeHarold_, he tried to make amends in the lines--

Yet one I would select from that proud throng, Partly because they blend me with his line, And partly that I did his sire some wrong.

This is all of any interest we know regarding the fitful connection of theguardian and ward.

Towards Dr. Drury the poet continued through life to cherish sentiments ofgratitude, and always spoke of him with veneration. "He was," he says,"the best, the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had; and I lookon him still as a father, whose warnings I have remembered but too well,though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but followedwhen I have done well or wisely."

Great educational institutions must consult the greatest good of thegreatest number of common-place minds, by regulations against which geniusis apt to kick; and Byron, who was by nature and lack of disciplinepeculiarly ill fitted to conform to routine, confesses that till the lastyear and a half he hated Harrow. He never took kindly to the studies ofthe place, and was at no time an accurate scholar. In the _Bards andReviewers_, and elsewhere, he evinces considerable familiarity with theleading authors of antiquity, but it is doubtful whether he was able toread any of the more difficult of them in the original. His translationsare generally commonplace, and from the marks on his books he must haveoften failed to trust his memory for the meanings of the most ordinaryGreek words. To the well-known passage in _Childe Harold_ on Soracte andthe "Latian echoes" he appends a prose comment, which preserves itsinterest as hearing on recent educational controversies:--"I wish toexpress that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend thebeauty; that we learn by rote, before we get by heart; that the freshnessis worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened anddestroyed, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power ofcomposition, which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latinand Greek, to relish or to reason upon.... In some parts of the continentyoung persons are taught from common authors, and do not read the bestclassics till their maturity."

Comparatively slight stress was then laid on modern languages. Byronlearnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiarwith the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with solittle ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to hismeeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian wasthe only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But theextent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list ofbooks, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and biography than most menof education read during a long life; a fair load of philosophy; the poetsen masse; among orators, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debatesfrom the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, includingBlair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition--"all verytiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my Godwithout the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of"Miscellanies" we have _Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c_; among novels,the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne,Rabelais, and Rousseau. He recommends Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ asthe best storehouse for second-hand quotations, as Sterne and others havefound it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perusedbefore the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of thepoet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically _"Dichtang und Wahrheit,"_we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader--"I read eating, read inbed, read when no one else reads"--and, having a memory only lessretentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to besuspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he neverread a Review till he was eighteen years old--when, he himself wrote one,utterly worthless, on Wordsworth.

At Harrow, Byron proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of"few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number ofhexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers wouldtolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, andpower of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguardedpraise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martialthan poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside intopoesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought hisway to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from theimpression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leaderamong his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in1805, the headship of Harrow changed hands. Dr. Drury retired, and wassucceeded by Dr. Butler. This event suggested the lines beginning,--

Where are those honours, Ida, once your own, When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne?

The appointment was generally unpopular among the boys, whose sympathieswere enlisted in favour of Mark Drury, brother of their former master, andDr. Butler seems for a time to have had considerable difficulty inmaintaining discipline. Byron, always "famous for rowing," was aringleader of the rebellious party, and compared himself to Tyrlaeus. Onone occasion he tore down the window gratings in a room of theschool-house, with the remark that they darkened the hall; on another heis reported to have refused a dinner invitation from the master, with theimpertinent remark that he would never think of asking him in return todine at Newstead. On the other hand, he seems to have set limits to themutiny, and prevented some of the boys from setting their desks on fire bypointing to their fathers' names carved on them. Byron afterwardsexpressed regret for his rudeness; but Butler remains in his verse asPomposus "of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul."

Of the poet's free hours, during the last years of his residence which herefers to as among the happiest of his life, many were spent in solitarymusing by an elm-tree, near a tomb to which his name has been given--aspot commanding a far view of London, of Windsor "bosomed high in tuftedtrees," and of the green fields that stretch between, covered in springwith the white and red snow of apple blossom. The others were devoted tothe society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, wasone of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at thechoicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feelinghe so pathetically expresses,--

Is there no cause beyond the common claim, Endear'd to all in childhood's very name? Ah, sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, Which whispers Friendship will be doubly dear To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, And seek abroad the love denied at home. Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee-- A home, a world, a paradise to me.

Of his Harrow intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, thepoet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the Lycus of the _ChildishRecollections_); Lord Delawarr (the Euryalus); John Wingfield (Alonzo),who died at Coimbra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus); Edward Noel Long(Cleon); Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead; and Sir Robert Peel.Of the last, his form-fellow and most famous of his mates, the story istold of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fagmaster, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half theblows. Peel was an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year,1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were hisjuniors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites.But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him thenickname of "the old English baron." To Wildman, who, as a senior, had aright of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, "I find you havegot Delawarr on your list; pray don't lick him." "Why not?" was the reply."Why, I don't know, except that he is a brother peer." Again, heinterfered with the more effectual arm of physical force to rescue ajunior protege--lame like himself, and otherwise much weaker--from theill-treatment of some hulking tyrant. "Harness," he said, "if any onebullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him if I can;" and he kept his word.Harness became an accomplished clergyman and minor poet, and has left somepleasing reminiscences of his former patron. The prodigy of the school,George Sinclair, was in the habit of writing the poet's exercises, andgetting his battles fought for him in return. His bosom friend was LordClare. To him his confidences were most freely given, and his mostaffectionate verses addressed. In the characteristic stanzas entitled"L'amitie est l'amour sans ailes," we feel as if between them thequalifying phrase might have been omitted: for their letters, carefullypreserved on either side, are a record of the jealous complaints and thereconciliations of lovers. In 1821 Byron writes, "I never hear the nameClare without a beating of the heart even now; and I write it with thefeelings of 1803-4-5, ad infinitum." At the same date he says of anaccidental meeting: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between thepresent time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicablefeeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was muchagitated--more in appearance than I was myself--for I could feel his heartbeat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my ownwhich made me think so. We were but five minutes together on the publicroad, but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence that could be weighedagainst them." They were "all that brothers should be but the name;" andit is interesting to trace this relationship between the greatest geniusof the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age,stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters andranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled.

Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of apassion of another kind, with a result that unhappily coloured his life.Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, theheiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of therace that had held with his such varied relations. In one of his lettersho dates the introduction previous to his trip to Cheltenham, but it seemsnot to have ripened into intimacy till a later period. Byron, who had, inthe autumn of 1802, visited his mother at Bath, joined in a masqueradethere and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In thefollowing year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the courseof a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at theAbbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This wasthe occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, whoinvited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return everyevening to Newstead, giving the excuse that the family pictures would comedown and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeatedin the _Siege of Corinth_. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley,which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion toMatlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, withthe exception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of hisfirst real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest; he wished to marryMiss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have "joined broad lands,healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart."

The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought before us in anaccount of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the ladyand the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he hadnever told his love; but that she had discovered--it is obvious that shenever returned--it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation whenshe was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of theirriding together in the country on their return to the family residence;again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of"Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to hermaid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs--"Do youthink I could care for that lame boy?"--upon which he rushed out of thehouse, and ran, like a hunted creature, to Newstead. Thence he shortlyreturned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks atHarrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill ofAnnesley--an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that havethe sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the nexttime I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?" "I hope so," she replied (herbetrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). Theannouncement of her marriage, which took place in August, 1805, was madeto him by his mother, with the remark, "I have some news for you. Take outyour handkerchief; you will require it." On hearing what she had to say,with forced calm he turned the conversation to other subjects; but he waslong haunted by a loss which he has made the theme of many of his verses.In 1807 he sent to the lady herself the lines beginning,--

O had my fate been join'd with thine.

In the following year he accepted an invitation to dine at Annesley, andwas visibly affected by the sight of the infant daughter of Mrs. Chaworth,to whom he addressed a touching congratulation. Shortly afterwards, whenabout to leave England for the first time, he finally addressed her in thestanzas,--

'Tis done, and shivering in the gale, The bark unfurls her snowy sail.

Some years later, having an opportunity of revisiting the family of hissuccessful rival, Mrs. Leigh dissuaded him. "Don't go," she said, "for ifyou do you will certainly fall in love again, and there will be a scene."The romance of the story culminates in the famous _Dream_, a poem ofunequal merit, but containing passages of real pathos, written in the year1816 at Diodati, as we are told, amid a flood of tears.

Miss Chaworth's attractions, beyond those of personal beauty, seem to havebeen mainly due--a common occurrence--to the poet's imagination. A younglady, two years his senior, of a lively and volatile temper, she enjoyedthe stolen interviews at the gate between the grounds, and laughed at theardent letters, passed through a confidant, of the still awkward youthwhom she regarded as a boy. She had no intuition to divine the presence,or appreciate the worship, of one of the future master-minds of England,nor any ambition to ally herself with the wild race of Newstead, andpreferred her hale, commonplace, fox-hunting squire. "She was the beauideal," says Byron, in his first accurate prose account of the affair,written 1823, a few days before his departure for Greece, "of all that myyouthful fancy could paint of beautiful. And I have taken all my fablesabout the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imaginationcreated in her. I say created; for I found her, like the rest of the sex,anything but angelic."

Mrs. Musters (her husband re-asserted his right to his own name) had inthe long-run reason to regret her choice. The ill-assorted pair after someunhappy years resolved on separation; and falling into bad health andworse spirits, the "bright morning star of Annesley" passed under a cloudof mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottinghamriot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancientfamily was sold by auction and scattered to the winds.

CHAPTER III.

CAMBRIDGE, AND FIRST PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP.

In October, 1805, on the advice of Dr. Drury, Byron was removed to TrinityCollege, Cambridge, and kept up a connexion with the University for lessthan three years of very irregular attendance, during which we hearnothing of his studies, except the contempt for them expressed in some ofthe least effective passages of his early satires. He came into residencein bad temper and low spirits. His attachment to Harrow characteristicallyredoubled as the time drew near to leave it, and his rest was broken "forthe last quarter, with counting the hours that remained." He was about tostart by himself, with the heavy feeling that he was no longer a boy, andyet, against his choice, for he wished to go to Oxford. The _Hours ofIdleness_, the product of this period, are fairly named. He was so idle asregards "problems mathematic," and "barbarous Latin," that it is matter ofsurprise to learn that he was able to take his degree, as he did in March,1808.

A good German critic, dwelling on the comparatively narrow range ofstudies to which the energies of Cambridge were then mainly directed, addssomewhat rashly, that English national literature stands for the most partbeyond the range of the academic circle, This statement is oftenreiterated with persistent inaccuracy; but the most casual reference tobiography informs us that at least four-fifths of the leading statesmen,reformers, and philosophers of England, have been nurtured within thewalls of her universities, and cherished a portion of their spirit. Fromthem have sprung the intellectual fires that have, at every crisis of ourhistory, kindled the nation into a new life; from the age of Wycliffe,through those of Latimer, Locke, Gibbon, Macaulay, to the present reign ofthe Physicists, comparatively few of the motors of their age have beenwholly "without the academic circle." Analysing with the same view thelives of the British poets of real note from Barbour to Tennyson, we findthe proportion of University men increases. "Poeta nascitur et fit;" andif the demands of technical routine have sometimes tended to stifle, thecomparative repose of a seclusion "unravaged" by the fierce activitiesaround it, the habit of dwelling on the old wisdom and harping on theancient strings, is calculated to foster the poetic temper and enrich itsresources. The discouraging effect of a sometimes supercilious andconservative criticism is not an unmixed evil. The verse-writer who can besnuffed out by the cavils of a tutorial drone, is a poetaster silenced forhis country's good. It is true, however, that to original minds, bubblingwith spontaneity, or arrogant with the consciousness of power, thediscipline is hard, and the restraint excessive; and that the men whomtheir colleges are most proud to remember, have handled them severely.Bacon inveighs against the scholastic trifling of his day; Milton talks ofthe waste of time on litigious brawling; Locke mocks at the logic of theschools; Cowley complains of being taught words, not things; Gibbonrejoices over his escape from the port and prejudice of Magdalen;Wordsworth contemns the "trade in classic niceties," and roves "inmagisterial liberty" by the Cam, as afterwards among the hills.

But all those hostile critics owe much to the object of theiranimadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the preference of Light to Fruit inthe _Novum Organum_, half of _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, the stately periods ofthe _Decline and Fall_, and the severe beauties of _Laodamia_, to thebetter influences of academic training on the minds of their authors.Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work--from the date of _The Curseof Minerva_ to that of the "Isles of Greece"--are brightened by lights andadorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on theslopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years bythe sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, hecontinued to rail as late as the publication of _Beppo_, in the 75th and76th stanzas of which we find another cause of complaint,--

One hates an author that's all author, fellows In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink-- So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous, One don't know what to say to them, or think.

Then, after commending Scott, Bogers, and Moore for being men of theworld, he proceeds:--

But for the children of the "mighty mother's," The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen, I leave them to the daily "Tea is ready," Snug coterie, and literary lady.

This attack, which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocityfrom some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, soundenough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike,of professional _litterateurs_, and was always haunted by a dread thatthey would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. Heaspired through life to the superiority of a double distinction, that of a"lord among wits, and among wits a lord." In this same spirit lie resentedthe comparison frequently made between him and Rousseau, and insisted onpoints of contrast. "He had a bad memory, I a good one. He was of thepeople; I of the aristocracy." Byron was capable, of unbending, where thedifference of rank was so great that it could not be ignored. On thisprinciple we may explain his enthusiastic regard for the choristerEddlestone, from whom he received the cornelian that is the theme of someof his verses, and whose untimely death in 1811 he sincerely mourned.

Of his Harrow friends, Harness and Long in due course followed him toCambridge, where their common pursuits were renewed. With the latter, whowas drowned in 1809, on a passage to Lisbon with his regiment, he spent aconsiderable portion of his time on the Cam, swimming and diving, in whichart they were so expert as to pick up eggs, plates, thimbles, and coinsfrom a depth of fourteen feet--incidents recalled to the poet's mind byreading Milton's invocation to Sabrina. During the, same period hedistinguished himself at cricket, as in boxing, riding, and shooting. Ofhis skill as a rider there are various accounts. He was an undoubtedmarksman, and his habit of carrying about pistols, and use of themwherever he went, was often a source of annoyance and alarm. He professeda theoretical objection to duelling, but was as ready to take a challengeas Scott, and more ready to send one.

Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little tosay. His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and hecommends the head of his college, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanourin his office, and a past reputation for convivial wit. His attentions toProfessor Hailstones at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received;but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account ofPorson, "hiccuping Greek like a Helot" in his cups. The poet was firstintroduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whosetalents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and mostof whom are interesting on their own account as well as from theirconnection with the subsequent phases of his career. By common consentCharles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, wasthe most remarkable of the group. Distinguished alike for scholarship,physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humour of fancy, andfascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impressionon the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austinon those of a later generation. The loss of this friend Byron alwaysregarded as an incalculable calamity. In a note to _Childe Harold_ hewrites, "I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, werehe not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind shown in theattainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates, than those ofany graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established hisfame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live inthe recollection of friends, who loved him too well to envy hissuperiority." He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of theCam, in the summer of 1811.

In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a requestfor contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes muchautobiographical matter. In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, hewrites: "Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together,talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got toLoughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment tosome other subject, at which he was indignant. 'Come,' said he, 'don't letus break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey's end;' and sohe continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end. He hadpreviously occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my rooms inTrinity, with the furniture; and Jones (his tutor), in his odd way hadsaid, in putting him in, 'Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention notto damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of_tumultuous passions_.' Matthews was delighted with this, and wheneveranybody came, to visit him, begged them to handle the very door withcaution, and used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner....He had the same droll sardonic way about everything. A wild Irishman,named F., one evening beginning to say something at a large supper,Matthews roared 'Silence!' and then pointing to F., cried out, in thewords of the oracle, 'Orson is endowed with reason.' When Sir Henry Smithwas expelled from Cambridge for a row with a tradesman named 'Hiron,'Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows everyevening--

Ah me! what perils do environ The man who meddles with hot Hiron!

He was also of that band of scoffers who used to rouse Lort Mansel fromhis slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window,foaming with wrath, and crying out, "I know you, gentlemen; I know you!"were wont to reply, "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort. Good Lort,deliver us!"

The whole letter, written in the poet's mature and natural style, gives avivid picture of the social life and surroundings of his Cambridge days:how much of the set and sententious moralizing of some of his formalbiographers might we not have spared, for a report of the conversation onthe road from London to Newstead. Of the others gathered round the samecentre, Scrope Davies enlisted the largest share of Byron's affections. Tohim he wrote after the catastrophe:--"Come to me, Scrope; I am almostdesolate--left alone in the world. I had but you, and H., and M., and letme enjoy the survivors while I can." Later he says, "Matthews, Davies,Hobhouse, and myself formed a coterie of our own. Davies has always beatenus all in the war of words, and by colloquial powers at once delighted andkept us in order; even M. yielded to the dashing vivacity of S.D." Thelast is everywhere commended for the brilliancy of his wit and repartee:he was never afraid to speak the truth. Once when the poet in one of hisfits of petulance exclaimed, intending to produce a terrible impression,"I shall go mad!" Davies calmly and cuttingly observed, "It is much morelike silliness than madness!" He was the only man who ever laid Byronunder any serious pecuniary obligation, having lent him 4800_l_. in sometime of strait. This was repaid on March 27, 1814, when the pair sat upover champagne and claret from six till midnight, after which "Scropecould not be got into the carriage on the way home, but remained tipsy andpious on his knees." Davies was much disconcerted at the influence whichthe sceptical opinions of Matthews threatened to exercise over Byron'smind. The fourth of this quadrangle of amity was John Cam Hobhouse,afterwards Lord Broughton, the steadfast friend of the poet's whole life,the companion of his travels, the witness of his marriage, the executor ofhis will, the zealous guardian and vindicator of his fame. His ability isabundantly attested by the impression he left on his contemporaries, hispublished description of the Pilgrimage, and subsequent literary andpolitical career. Byron bears witness to the warmth of his affections, andthe charms of his conversation, and to the candour which, as he confessedto Lady Blessington, sometimes tried his patience. There is little doubtthat they had some misunderstanding when travelling together, but it was apassing cloud. Eighteen months after his return the poet admits thatHobhouse was his best friend; and when he unexpectedly walked up thestairs of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, at Pisa, Madame Guiccioli informs usthat Byron was seized with such violent emotion, and so extreme an excessof joy, that it seemed to take away his strength, and he was forced to sitdown in tears.

On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated with it,was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a soundcritic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine,whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by hisson, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The viewsentertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; theyboth fought under the standards of the classic school; they resented thesame criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were boundtogether by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson'sverses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the _Bards andReviewers_ and the early cantos of _Childe Harold_ the promise of_Manfred_ and _Cain_. Among the associates who strove to bring the poetback to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error ofhis thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore themost judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultifiedby pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank andunguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which arepreserved, and some for the first time reproduced in therecently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity andsuperficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt tocharacterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811,Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with yourimmortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdityof speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Paganwill go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. I am no Platonist, I amnothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist,Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainoussects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord andhatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all ingood will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse,the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soulmeant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson toGibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza;and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is somethingpagan in me that I cannot shake off. _In short, I deny nothing, but Idoubt everything_." But his early attitude on matters of religion is bestset forth in a letter to Gilford, of 1813, in which he says, "I am nobigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted theimmortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of aGod. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world,when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom,that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might beoverrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotchschool, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of mylife, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, adisease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria."

Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, whichhad for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. Tono one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge inmore reckless sallies of humour; to no one did he more readily betray hislittle conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed tohim the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrousencounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one ofthe poet's many single-hearted acts of munificence--a gift of 1000_l_., topay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle,the former gratefully alludes to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew theexultation of heart, aye, and of head to, I feel at being free from thosedepressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend andbrother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefitthat was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver.

Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned HenryDrury--long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law,to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad areaddressed--and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with variousassociations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and,after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. Thisgentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgottennovels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808,when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on hisearly volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach anabsurd climax.

Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron hadmade other friends. His vacations were divided between London andSouthwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once arefuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman Minster. HereMrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and wasfrequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medicalstudent of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talentsabove the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom anumber of his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J.T. Becher, authorof a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted forencouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which hefound dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from thelatter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how Icurse the heavy hours I dragged along for so many months among the Mohawkswho inhabit your kraals!" and adding, that his sole satisfaction duringhis residence there was having pared off some pounds of flush.Notwithstanding, in the small but select society of this inlandwatering-place he passed on the whole a pleasant time--listening to themusic of the simple ballads in which he delighted, taking part in theperformances of the local theatre, making excursions, and writing verses.This otherwise quiet time was disturbed by exhibitions of violence on thepart of Mrs. Byron, which suggest the idea of insanity. After one moreoutrageous than usual, both mother and son are said to have gone to theneighbouring apothecary, each to request him not to supply the other withpoison. On a later occasion, when he had been meeting her bursts of ragewith stubborn mockery, she flung a poker at his head, and narrowly missedher aim. Upon this he took flight to London, and his Hydra or Alecto, asho calls her, followed: on their meeting a truce was patched, and theywithdrew in opposite directions, she back to Southwell, he to refreshhimself on the Sussex coast, till in the August of the same year (1806) heagain rejoined her. Shortly afterwards we have from Pigot a description ofa trip to Harrogate, when his lordship's favourite Newfoundland,Boatswain, whose relation to his master recalls that of Bounce to Pope, orMaida to Scott, sat on the box.

In November Byron printed for private circulation the first issue of hisjuvenile poems. Mr. Becher having called his attention to one which hethought objectionable, the impression was destroyed; and the author set towork upon another, which, at once weeded and amplified, saw the light inJanuary, 1807. He sent copies, under the title of _Juvenilia_, to severalof his friends, and among others to Henry Mackenzie (the Man of Feeling),and to Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Encouraged by their favourablenotices, he determined in appeal to a wider audience, and in March, 1807,the _Hours of Idleness_, still proceeding from the local press at Newark,were given to the world. In June we find the poet again writing from hiscollege rooms, dwelling with boyish detail on his growth in height andreduction in girth, his late hours and heavy potations, his comrades, andthe prospects of his book. From July to September he dates from London,excited by the praises of some now obscure magazine, and planning ajourney to the Hebrides. In October he is again settled at Cambridge, andin a letter to Miss Pigot, makes a humorous reference to one of hisfantastic freaks: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world--a_tame bear_. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to dowith him, and my reply was, 'He should sit for a fellowship.' This answerdelighted them not." The greater part of the spring and summer of 1808 wasspent at Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Left to himself, he seemsduring this period for the first time to have freely indulged indissipations, which are in most lives more or less carefully concealed.But Byron, with almost unparalleled folly, was perpetually taking thepublic into his confidence, and all his "sins of blood," with the strangeadditions of an imaginative effrontery, have been thrust before us in amanner in which Rochester or Rousseau might have thought indelicate.Nature and circumstances conspired the result. With passions which he isfond of comparing to the fires of Vesuvius and Hecla, he was, on hisentrance into a social life which his rank helped to surround withtemptations, unconscious of any sufficient motive for resisting them; hehad no one to restrain him from the whim of the moment, or with sufficientauthority to give him effective advice. A temperament of generaldespondency, relieved by reckless outbursts of animal spirits, is theleast favourable to habitual self-control. The melancholy of Byron was notof the pensive and innocent kind attributed to Cowley, rather that of the,[Greek: melancholikoi] of whom Aristotle asserts, with profoundpsychological or physiological intuition, that they are [Greek: aei ensphodra orexei]. The absurdity of Moore's frequent declaration, that allgreat poets are inly wrapt in perpetual gloom, is only to be excused bythe modesty which, in the saying so obviously excludes himself from thelist. But it is true that anomalous energies are sources of incessantirritation to their possessor, until they have found their proper vent inthe free exercise of his highest faculties. Byron had not yet done, this,when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, andNewstead--shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep andtrying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travellingwith disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master,Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguishedprofessor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his"old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement todwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that theynever trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world termsdishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want ofevidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means ofleading any one astray--a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moralworshippers of Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name.

[Footnote 1: In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter from Mr. Minto to the _Athenaeum_ (Sept. 2nd, 1876), in which with considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to identify the girl with "Thyrza," and with "Astarte," whom he regards as the same person.]

Though much of this year of his life was passed unprofitably, from itdates the impulse that provoked him to put forth his powers. The_Edinburgh_, with the attack on the _Hours of Idleness_, appeared inMarch, 1808. This production, by Lord Brougham, is a specimen of thetomahawk style of criticism prevalent in the early years of the century,in which the main motive of the critic was, not to deal fairly with hisauthor, but to acquire for himself an easy reputation for cleverness, by aseries of smart contemptuous sentences. Taken apart, most of thestrictures of the _Edinburgh_ are sufficiently just, and the passagesquoted for censure are all bad. Byron's genius as a poet was notremarkably precocious. The _Hours of Idleness_ seldom rise, either inthought or expression, very far above the average level of juvenile verse;many of the pieces in the collection are weak imitations, or commonplacedescriptions; others suggested by circumstances of local or temporaryinterest, had served their turn before coming into print. Their prevailingsentiment is an affectation of misanthropy, conveyed in such lines asthese:--

Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen, I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen.

This mawkish element unfortunately survives in much of the author's laterverse. But even in this volume there are indications of force, andcommand. The _Prayer of Nature_, indeed, though previously written, wasnot included in the edition before the notice of the critic; but the soundof _Loch-na-Gair_ and some of the stanzas on _Newstead_ ought to havesaved him from the mistake of his impudent advice. The poet, who throughlife waited with feverish anxiety for every verdict on his work, isreported after reading the review to have looked like a man about to senda challenge. In the midst of a transparent show of indifference, heconfesses to have drunk three bottles of claret on the evening of itsappearance. But the wound did not mortify into torpor; the Sea-Kings'blood stood him in good stead, and he was not long in collecting hisstrength for the panther-like spring, which, gaining strength by itsdelay, twelve months later made it impossible for him to be contemned.

The last months of the year he spent at Newstead, vacated by the tenant,who had left the building in the tumble-down condition in which he foundit. Byron was, by his own acknowledgment, at this time, "heavily dipped,"generosities having combined with selfish extravagances to the result; hehad no funds to subject the place to anything like a thorough repair, buthe busied himself in arranging a few of the rooms for his own present andhis mother's after use. About this date he writes to her, beginning in hisusual style, "Dear Madam," saying he has as yet no rooms ready for herreception, but that on his departure she shall be tenant till his return.During this interval he was studying Pope, and carefully maturing his ownSatire. In November the dog Boatswain died in a fit of madness. The eventcalled forth the famous burst of misanthropic verse, ending with thecouplet,--

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; I never knew but _one_, and _here_ he lies;--

and the inscription on the monument that still remains in the gardens ofNewstead,--

Near this spot, Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808.

On January 22, 1809, his lordship's coming of age was celebrated withfestivities, curtailed of their proportions by his limited means. Early inspring he paid a visit to London, bringing the proof of his satire to thepublisher, Cawthorne. From St. James's Street he writes to Mrs. Byron, onthe death of Lord Falkland, who had been killed in a duel, and expresses asympathy for his family, left in destitute circumstances, whom heproceeded to relieve with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy ofthe manner in which it was shown. Referring to his own embarrassment, heproceeds in the expression of a resolve, often repeated, "Come what may,Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot--Ihave fixed my heart on it; and no pressure, present or future, shallinduce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance." He was buildingfalse hopes on the result of the suit for the Rochdale property, which,being dragged from court to court, involved him in heavy expenses, with nosatisfactory result. He took his seat in the House of Lords on the 13th ofMarch, and Mr. Dallas, who accompanied him to the bar of the House, hasleft an account of his somewhat unfortunate demeanour.

"His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated, andthat he was thinking of the nobleman to whom he had once looked for a handand countenance in his introduction. There were very few persons in theHouse. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When LordByron had taken the oaths, the Chancellor quitted his seat, and wenttowards him with a smile, putting out his hand warmly to welcome him; and,though I did not catch the words, I saw that he paid him some compliment.This was all thrown away upon Lord Byron, who made a stiff bow, and putthe tips of his fingers into the Chancellor's hand. The Chancellor did notpress a welcome so received, but resumed his seat; while Lord Byroncarelessly seated himself for a few minutes on one of the empty benches tothe left of the throne, usually occupied by the lords in Opposition. When,on his joining me, I expressed what I had felt, he said 'If I had shakenhands heartily, he would have set me down for one of his party; but I willhave nothing to do with them on either side. I have taken my seat, and nowI will go abroad.'"

A few days later the _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ appeared beforethe public. The first anonymous edition was exhausted in a month; asecond, to which the author gave his name, quickly followed. He was wontat a later date to disparage this production, and frequently recanted manyof his verdicts in marginal notes. Several, indeed, seem to have beendictated by feelings so transitory, that in the course of the correctionof proof blame was turned into praise, and praise into blame; i.e. hewrote in MS. before he met the agreeable author,--

I leave topography to coxcomb Gell;

we have his second thought in the first edition, before he saw theTroad,--

I leave topography to classic Gell;

and his third, half way in censure, in the fifth,--

I leave topography to rapid Gell.

Of such materials are literary judgments made!

The success of Byron's satire was due to the fact of its being the onlygood thing of its kind since Churchill,--for in the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad_only butterflies were broken upon the wheel--and to its being the firstpromise of a now power. The _Bards and Reviewers_ also enlisted sympathy,from its vigorous attack upon the critics who had hitherto assumed theprerogative of attack. Jeffrey and Brougham were seethed in their ownmilk; and outsiders, whose credentials were still being examined, as Mooreand Campbell, came in for their share of vigorous vituperation. The Lakersfared worst of all. It was the beginning of the author's life-long war,only once relaxed, with Southey. Wordsworth--though against this passageis written "unjust," a concession not much sooner made than withdrawn,--isdubbed an idiot, who--

Both by precept and example shows, That prose is verse and verse is only prose;

and Coleridge, a baby,--

To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear.

The lines ridiculing the encounter between Jeffrey and Moore, are a fairspecimen of the accuracy with which the author had caught the ring ofPope's antithesis:--

The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place. The Tolbooth felt--for marble sometimes can, On such occasions, feel as much as man-- The Tolbooth felt defrauded of her charms, If Jeffrey died, except within her arms.

Meanwhile Byron had again retired to Newstead, where he invited somechoice spirits to hold a few weeks of farewell revel. Matthews, one ofthese, gives an account of the place, and the time they spentthere--entering the mansion between a bear and a wolf, amid a salvo ofpistol-shots; sitting up to all hours, talking politics, philosophy,poetry; hearing stories of the dead lords, and the ghost of the BlackBrother; drinking their wine out of the skull cup which the owner had madeout of the cranium of some old monk dug up in the garden; breakfasting attwo, then reading, fencing, riding, cricketing, sailing on the lake, andplaying with the bear or teasing the wolf. The party broke up withouthaving made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which ChildeHarold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, whenthe poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way"_outre mer_."

CHAPTER IV.

TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL.

There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than theadventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his firstexpedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of hisintrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particularof his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one ofthem, which have all the same relation to reality as the _Arabian Nights_to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid.[1]

[Footnote 1: Those who wish to read them are referred to the three large volumes--published in 1825, by Mr. Iley, Portman Street--of anonymous authorship.]

Byron had far more than an average share of the _emigre_ spirit, thecounterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. Heheld with Wilhelm Meister--

To give space for wandering is it, That the earth was made so wide.

and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantagesof looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bittereffects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander,that I think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroadfor a term, among the few allies our wars have left us."

On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mindwith information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattainedgoal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse,Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton the sonof one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in _ChildeHarold_. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from hishealth breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar.

Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full ofQuakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, andHodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under aslight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excusedhimself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, heat one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving Englandwithout regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in thenext, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a strain ofboisterous buffoonery. On the 2nd of July, the packet, by which he wasbound, sailed for Lisbon and arrived there about the middle of the month,when the English fleet was anchored in the Tagus. The poet in some of hisstanzas has described the fine view of the port and the disconsolatedirtiness of the city itself, the streets of which were at that timerendered dangerous by the frequency of religious and politicalassassinations. Nothing else remains of his sojourn to interest us, savethe statement of Mr. Hobhouse, that his friend made a more perilous,though less celebrated, achievement by water than his crossing theHellespont, in swimming from old Lisbon to Belem Castle, Byron praises theneighbouring Cintra, as "the most beautiful village in the world," thoughhe joins with Wordsworth in heaping anathemas on the Convention, andextols the grandeur of Mafra, the Escurial of Portugal, in the convent ofwhich a monk, showing the traveller a large library, asked if the Englishhad any books in their country. Despatching his baggage and servants bysea to Gibraltar, he and his friend started on horseback through thesouth-west of Spain. Their first resting-place, after a ride of 400 miles,performed at an average rate of seventy in the twenty-four hours, wasSeville, where they lodged for three days in the house of two ladies, towhose attractions, as well as the fascination he seems to have exertedover them, the poet somewhat garrulously refers. Here, too, he saw,parading on the Prado, the famous _Maid of Saragossa_, whom he celebratesin his equally famous stanzas (_Childe Harold_, I., 54-58). Of Cadiz, thenext stage, he writes with enthusiasm as a modern Cythera, describing thebull fights in his verse, and the beauties in glowing prose. The belles ofthis city, he says, are the Lancashire witches of Spain; and by reason ofthem, rather than the sea-shore or the Sierra Morena, "sweet Cadiz is thefirst spot in the creation." Hence, by an English frigate, they sailed toGibraltar, for which place he has nothing but curses. Byron had nosympathy with the ordinary forms of British patriotism, and in our greatstruggle with the tyranny of the First Empire, he may almost be said tohave sympathized with Napoleon.

The ship stopped at Cagliari in Sardinia, and again at Girgenti on theSicilian coast. Arriving at Malta, they halted there for three weeks--timeenough to establish a sentimental, though Platonic, flirtation with Mrs.Spencer Smith, wife of our minister at Constantinople, sister-in-law ofthe famous admiral, and the heroine of some exciting adventures. She isthe "Florence" of _Childe Harold_, and is afterwards addressed in some ofthe most graceful verses of his cavalier minstrelsy--

Do thou, amidst the fair white walls, If Cadiz yet be free, At times from out her latticed halls Look o'er the dark blue sea-- Then think upon Calypso's isles, Endear'd by days gone by,-- To others give a thousand smiles, To me a single sigh.

The only other adventure of the visit is Byron's quarrel with an officer,on some unrecorded ground, which Hobhouse tells us nearly resulted in aduel. The friends left Malta on September 29th, in the war-ship "Spider,"and after anchoring off Patras, and spending a few hours on shore, theyskirted the coast of Acarnania, in view of localities--as Ithaca, theLeucadian rock, and Actium--whose classic memories filtered through thepoet's mind and found a place in his masterpieces. Landing at Previsa,they started on a tour through Albania,--

O'er many a mount sublime, Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales.

Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and thehalf-savage independence of the people, described as "always struttingabout with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with hiscompanions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, thefamous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Beratin Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia'slake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Beforereaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, inthe midst of which they separated, and Byron's detachment lost its way fornine hours, during which he composed the verses to Florence, quoted above.

Some days later they together arrived at Tepaleni, and were there receivedby Ali Pasha in person. The scene on entering the town is described asrecalling Scott's Branksome Castle and the feudal system; and theintroduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet'scorsairs,--is graphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. "His firstquestion was, why at so early an age I left my country, and without a'lala,' or nurse? He then said the English minister had told him I was ofa great family, and desired his respects to my mother, which I now presentto you (date, November 12th). He said he was certain I was a man of birth,because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. He told meto consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked onme as his son. Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds,fruit, and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Byron shortly afterwardsdiscovered his host to be, a poisoner and an assassin. "Two days ago," heproceeds in a passage which illustrates his character and a commonexperience, "I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to theignorance of the captain and crew. Fletcher yelled after his wife; theGreeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmen on Alla; the captain burstinto tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God. The sails weresplit, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night settingin; and all our chance was to make for Corfu--or, as F. patheticallycalled it, 'a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, butfinding him incorrigible, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and laydown on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, saysHobhouse, to be of any assistance, he in a short time was found amid thetrembling sailors, fast asleep. They got back to the coast of Suli, andshortly afterwards started through Acarnania and AEtolia for the Morea,again rejoicing in the wild scenery and the apparently kindred spirits ofthe wild men among whom they passed. Byron was especially fascinated bythe firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes andreproduces in _Childe Harold_. On the 21st of November he reachedMesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most ofhis escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight ofParnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring signof Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet onthe shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to saveit--the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and Inever did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." FromLivadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave ofTrophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, andthe field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrivedbefore the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his firstglimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:--

Ancient of days, august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away: is this the whole-- A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour?

After which he reverts to his perpetually recurring moral, "Men come andgo; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars, endure"--

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds; Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, glory, freedom fail--but nature still is fair.

The duration of Lord Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months,and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica; Eleusis,Hymettus, Cape Colonna, (Sunium, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck), theColonus of OEdipus, and Marathon, the plain of which is said to have beenplaced at his disposal for about the same sum that, thirty years later, anAmerican offered to give for the bark with the poet's name on the tree atNewstead. Byron had a poor opinion of the modern Athenians, who seem tohave at this period done their best to justify the Roman satirist. Hefound them superficial, cunning, and false; but, with generous historicinsight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been muchbetter; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it wouldrequire ages of freedom to emancipate them.

In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widowof an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom,Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens,without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of theheart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet'sgenuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marblesfrom the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of LordElgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the _Curse ofMinerva_; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of theold Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shedtears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one ofethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold Londonin the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left;a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Atheniansto concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, andthey are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum.

Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissusto some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accidentnearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve theirnames on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus inthe evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an Englishsloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the28th of March, the second canto of _Childe Harold_, begun in the previousautumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood,visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to thejackals, in the _Siege of Corinth_; and on April 11th left by the"Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched atthe Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and ramblingamong the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in _DonJuan_ and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules thebelief.

I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, And heard Troy doubted! Time will doubt of Rome! * * * * * There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is, Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea, Entomb'd the bravest of the brave Achilles.-- They say so: Bryant says the contrary.

Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byronlanded on the European side, and swam, in company with LieutenantEkenhead, from Sestos to Abydos--a performance of which he boasts sometwenty times. The strength of the current is the main difficulty of afeat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was atempting theme for classical allusions. At length, on May 14, he reachedConstantinople, exalted the Golden Horn above all the sights he had seen,and now first abandoned his design of travelling to Persia. Galt, andother more or less gossiping travellers, have accumulated a number ofincidents of the poet's life at this period, of his fanciful dress,blazing in scarlet and gold, and of his sometimes absurd contentions forthe privileges of rank--as when he demanded precedence of the Englishambassador in an interview with the Sultan, and, on its refusal, couldonly be pacified by the assurances of the Austrian internuncio. Inconverse with indifferent persons he displayed a curious alternation offrankness and hauteur, and indulged a habit of letting people up and down,by which he frequently gave offence. More interesting are narratives ofthe suggestion of some of his verses, as the slave-market in _Don Juan_,and the spectacle of the dead criminal tossed on the waves, revived in the_Bride of Abydos_. One example is, if we except Dante's _Ugolino_, themost remarkable instance in literature of the expansion, without theweakening, of the horrible. Take first Mr. Hobhouse's plain prose: "Thesensations produced by the state of the weather"--it was wretched andstormy when they left the "Salsette" for the city--"and leaving acomfortable cabin, were in unison with the impressions which we felt when,passing under the palace of the Sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypresswhich rises above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." Afterthis we may measure the almost fiendish force of a morbid imaginationbrooding over the incident,--

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall Hold o'er the dead their carnival: Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb, They were too busy to bark at him. From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; And their white tusks crunch'd on the whiter skull, As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grow dull.

No one ever more persistently converted the incidents of travel intopoetic material; but sometimes in doing so he borrowed more largely fromhis imagination than his memory, as in the description of the seraglio, ofwhich there is reason to doubt his having seen more than the entrance.

Byron and Hobhouse set sail from Constantinople on the 14th July,1810--the latter to return direct to England, a determination which, fromno apparent fault on either side, the former did not regret. One incidentof the passage derives interest from its possible consequence. Taking up,and unsheathing, a yataghan which he found on the quarter deck, horemarked, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing amurder." This harmless piece of melodrama--the idea of which is expandedin Mr. Dobell's _Balder_, and parodied in _Firmilian_--may have been thebasis of a report afterwards circulated, and accepted among others byGoethe, that his lordship had committed a murder; hence, obviously, thecharacter of _Lara_, and the mystery of _Manfred!_ The poet parted fromhis friend at Zea, (Ceos): after spending some time in solitude on thelittle island, he returned to Athens, and there renewed acquaintance withhis school friend, the Marquis of Sligo, who after a few days accompanied